Nanotechnology News – Latest Headlines

With an invention that can be made from some of the same parts used in CD players, University of Michigan researchers have developed a way to measure the growth and drug susceptibility of individual bacterial cells without the use of a microscope.

To rebuild damaged parts of a human body from scratch is a dream that has long fired human imagination, from Mary Shelley's Doctor Frankenstein to modern day surgeons. Now, a team of European scientists, working in the frame of the EUREKA project ModPolEUV, has made a promising contribution to reconstructive surgery thanks to an original multidisciplinary approach matching cutting-edge medicine to the latest developments in nanotechnology.

Carbon nanotubes, which are extremely small fibers used in many new light and strong materials, may present health risks if inhaled, in the worst case leading to cancer, according to new research from Lulea University of Technology.

Imagine a hole so small that air can't go through it, or a hole so small it can trap a single wavelength of light. Nanotech Security Corp., with the help of Simon Fraser University researchers, is using this type of nanotechnology to create unique anti-counterfeiting security features.

Researchers at CNRS and Universite Paris-Sud 11 have succeeded in creating a conductive layer on the surface of strontium titanate (SrTiO3), a transparent insulating material considered to be very promising for the development of future microelectronics applications. Two nanometers thick, this conductive layer is a two-dimensional metallic electron gas (2DEG) that is part of the insulating material.

Nanotechnology issues are about to hit the mass media in a big way. The new EC-funded NANOCHANNELS project was launched last week with a two-day kick-off meeting that led to the planning of a dynamic programme of communication, dialogue, and engagement in issues of nanotechnology aimed at European citizens.

Tiny gold particles are good for transferring heat and could be a promising tool for creating localized heating in, for example, a living cell. In new experiments, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have measured the temperature of nano-sized gold particles with extreme precision and have examined their ability to melt the lipid membranes surrounding cells, paving the way for dissolving sick cells.

An 18-month NASA research effort to visualize the passenger airplanes of the future has produced some ideas that at first glance may appear to be old fashioned. Instead of exotic new designs seemingly borrowed from science fiction, familiar shapes - but built with high-tech materials - dominate the pages of advanced concept studies.

Electron microscopes are among the most widely used scientific and medical tools for studying and understanding a wide range of materials, from biological tissue to miniature magnetic devices, at tiny levels of detail. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a novel and potentially widely applicable method to expand the capabilities of conventional transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). Passing electrons through a nanometer-scale grating, the scientists imparted the resulting electron waves with so much orbital momentum that they maintained a corkscrew shape in free space.